Anti-Trump protesters march in St.Paul

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As in other big cities, protests followed the election of The Donald as 45th President of the United States. In the Strib, Maura Lerner and Pat Pheifer report, “A protest that started with about 100 people at the Minnesota State Capitol grew quickly Tuesday night as it moved first to John Ireland Boulevard then to downtown St. Paul. … ‘This is about what’s going to be done in our name,’ said Peter Radcliffe, a former Macalester College professor. ‘We’re all responsible. We’re better than this.’” Are we, really?

For MPR Emma Sapong says, “In St. Paul, protesters gathered in front of the state Capitol around 6 p.m. It started small, with fewer than 75 people in attendance, chatting with each other as raps by Public Enemy blasted from a car stereo. The crowd grew as the night went on, and it eventually got down to the Green Line light rail tracks and halted trains temporarily. Most of the protests around the country were peaceful, except for in Oakland, Calif., the Associated Press reported, where protesters started fires in trash cans and broke windows in the city’s downtown.”

Up on the Range,Tim Nelson of MPR says, “Minnesota’s Iron Range has been a Democratic stronghold for generations. But on Tuesday, parts of the fortress fell. In Hibbing, the heart of the Range, Republican Donald Trump narrowly edged out Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. Area voters also went with the GOP on two local Minnesota House races, turning out five-term DFL Rep. Tom Anzelc and four-term Rep. John Persell. … ‘Life here has a little bit more difficult with each passing year for everybody, especially for regular working people,’ said [DFL activist and Iron Range blogger Aaron] Brown. ‘Miners have great jobs by local standards. But the number of shutdowns, the amount of uncertainty … I think people are just mad enough to reject the party that they’ve known.’” Don’t worry, folks. It’s going to be 1958 again, real soon.

Meanwhile, Peter Cox of MPR says, “Jason Lewis sees the major Republican victories, including his own, Tuesday night as a mandate. ‘Trump shocked everybody. And again taking Democratic states. Keeping the Senate, keeping the House,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve got a Republican president. That’s a mandate. And so it means they’ve got to fulfill a mandate. They have to move on something and deliver. And that’s as it should be.’” So get a nail gun and start building that wall.

Speaking of trauma, Josh Verges of the PiPress says, “St. Paul Public Schools said Wednesday that additional emotional support staff would be made available, if necessary, to students upset by the surprise election of Donald Trump. Supervisory counselors were slated to check in with school staff to identify any schools that are ‘more impacted by the results,’ spokeswoman Toya Stewart Downey told the Pioneer Press early Wednesday.”

It took a while and it has very little meaning. Says Kyle Potter for the AP, “Hillary Clinton finally won Minnesota, but she wasn’t called the winner until late Wednesday morning and just minutes before she went on TV to concede her race to Donald Trump. … Clinton spent her campaign time other places than Minnesota, and why not? No Republican had won here since Richard Nixon in 1972. Trump barely came, either, mounting only a final-weekend airport rally. But the wave that carried him to national victory ripped over Minnesota, too, and Clinton’s final margin was barely more than 1 point.”

Says TIME’s Kate Samuelson on Ilhan Omar’s victory, “Although the U.S. did notelect its first female president Tuesday night, one woman still made history. Former refugee Ilhan Omar, who proudly wears the hijab, became America’s first Somali-American Muslim woman legislator after she claimed a strong victory in the Minnesota House race.”

Yeah, baby! Everyone’s going to be rich! Says Patrick Kennedy in the Strib, “Investors on Wednesday bet that President-elect Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress will raise government spending and ease regulations on banks and energy producers. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note reached its highest level in eight months, a sign that investors think the government will be issuing a lot of debt to pay for Trump’s infrastructure priorities and other programs.” Can we bill Mexico for highways and bridges, too?

Elsewhere in the Strib, we have the, dare we say, tread worn call for “working across the aisle” in the Legislature. “More than many other Americans, Minnesotans rely on state-level government to meet shared needs, solve shared problems and set the table for future prosperity. Dayton and the new Republican majorities must strive for a new chapter in divided government’s long history. This time, they need to make it work. … Count us among the Minnesotans who crave an early sign that their state government can get past partisan paralysis and function in their interests.”

Oh, is that what they call it?Mathias Baden of the Forum News Service reports, “Washington County sheriff’s deputies arrested an erotic photographer at Lake Elmo Park Reserve and he was charged with felony solicitation of a child to engage in sexual conduct. Joseph Thor Perkins, 35, of Apple Valley was conditionally released from the Washington County jail in lieu of $200,000 bail. … His Facebook page said he is divorced, has been a peewee hockey coach in Bloomington, and works as a forklift driver in Burnsville.” So he’s a skilled craftsman by day and dabbles in erotic portraiture by night?

Finally, a note of levity: In the PiPress, Bob Shaw writes, “The Lake Elmo City Council is under new management after landslide victories Tuesday. Incumbent mayor Mike Pearson won re-election with 73 percent of the vote. He is allied with two council candidates, each of whom got more than 30 percent of the votes. Together they will form a new majority on the five-member council, which Pearson said will take the city in a new direction. … Turnover of city hall employees has been about 90 percent since January 2015, council members were accused of harassing city employees, and a former city administrator sued the city. The city’s insurers jacked up the deductible because the ‘dysfunctional’ council boosted the risk of lawsuits.” Uhh, do the newcomers have proven abilities in chair-throwing, hair-pulling and name-calling?

…get too comfortable with their new majorities, it’s worth noting that poverty crosses both geographic and party lines. More poor people live in Republican congressional districts than live in Democratic ones, but there are only 2 congressional districts in the nation that don’t have at least one area wherein poverty exceeds 20%. That’s something for both Rick Nolan and Jason Lewis to address, and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary, doesn’t work.

They care. Why would they, the lowest common denominator just swept them to victory. Any fallout from not pleasing the base can simply be supressed away now, do you honestly think a conservative Supreme Court will give a hoot about the raft of voting restrictions that will be enacted by 2018? I honestly cannot fathom where the optimism is coming from, this is it, game over, checkmate. Barring a calamity on the scale of the Great Depression, this is the new reality for the rest of most of our lives. There really is nothing we can do about it, we liberals finally succumbed to the fatal flaw in our logic, that simply explaining the correctness of our views is all that’s needed to ensure that everyone will hop aboard. Udstrand does it again in his letter today. It doesn’t matter that we’re right, it doesn’t matter that if asked seperately, folks support our positions. What matters is that when people hear lies that tell them what they wish to be true is reality, they believe them. We hold ourselves to a higher standard and as such have been left behind. “Good guys finish last,” is the only lesson from this election, our faith in the goodness of our fellow citizens was misplaced, and life as we know it has ended.

I doubt very much that a Trump presidency will do anything to help the poor or the working class. The troublesome part is, I don’t think the current crop of Republicans will have to face any consequences. The party that likes to talk up personal responsibility will always find someone else to blame–intransigent liberals in Congress (never mind who has the majority), the liberal media, the Chinese, Obama (for at least the next 20 years). Destructive Republican policy decisions will not have been a factor for them.